We had an early start at 6:30 for our 7am breakfast. We saw the sunrise though! It was very cool. For breakfast they actually had this really good fried bread. The chin hair man kept trying to get us to eat more. We were like 'we're full!.' We then got in the van and headed to the desert, passing through HoHot once more. The drive was extremely long! After leaving at 8am, we were in the car until 11:30am.
Sunrise:
Long, long car ride:
We stopped at a place right on the edge of the desert. On one side they were building a huge highway, and on the other it was empty. We had another yurt lunch upon arrival. I ate more rice (I really wish they had ketchup or salt at these places, it would just make the rice taste so much better!).
Before we went up to the desert, we had to rent these funny boot things that went over your shoes, so sand didn't get in them. Then we also had to buy these headscarf things to cover our hair and mouth. We looked like quite a bunch. Once we were all equipped, we took a truck up to the main desert for camel riding!
Stylish camel attire:
We rode camels for forty minutes. It was incredible. We were in the middle of a desert, in Mongolia, riding camels! They were so calm also! I was sad because I didn't get many pictures- I didn't want sand to get in my big camera- but everyone else got some. We stopped at one point and I took some close ups of the camels, they were so soft! I just couldn't believe a) how tall they were, b) that they didn't freak out, and c) their humps felt floppy!
In the desert!
After we did some sledding down the sand dunes, I fell off of course. It was so slow at first and then suddenly just picked up so much speed! So I got sand all over me, again. We took a truck back to the initial place, where we once again crowded into the car to drive back to HoHot.
So after another super long drive, we went to a factory. We literally had to walk through a billion shops to get out. I didn't buy anything though (the temptation was high-but then I kept hearing my parents' and Heather's voices in my head).
We arrived back at the train station and had to wait 5 hours until our train! We went to this place called Dico's (no clue how to say it), it was basically McDonald's- I swear HoHot, Inner Mongolia is the only city in China without McDonald's. Everyone stared at us, again. We sat at Dico's for about three hours, basically going crazy. We were all so stir crazy from being cooped up in the car all day. It was a really funny evening though. At 9:00 we walked over to the train station to wait some more. When we finally boarded the train we were able to get in the same cabin through 3 seat switches, quite the success!
Rachel at Dico's:
Reading our books, such nerds:
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